In the past when I’ve posted about purchasing a new puppy for your family I’ve always recommended going to a licensed breeder if you’re looking for a particular breed of dog. Unfortunately, not every licensed breeder is on the up and up. Just because a breeder may be a legitimate business doesn’t mean their breeding their dogs in the most ethical way possible as one family in Tennessee found out.

An elderly couple from Clinton, Tennessee, put a deposit down on a Yorkshire Terrier puppy they planned to purchase from a breeder that had advertised on Facebook. However, they wouldn’t be able to bring the puppy home until it was old enough to be separated from its mother. Sadly, after the couple put their deposit down the puppy became sick and died. The breeder allegedly told the couple that they would refund their deposit and find them a replacement puppy. According to this article from WTAE, neither has happened. The breeder was said to have had financial hardships and might not be breeding anymore yet advertisements for puppies have supposedly not ceased.

As has been mentioned before, Geebo does not accept ads for pets as puppies advertised online tend to come from puppy mills where breeders put profit ahead of a puppy’s well-being. In the past, I’ve recommended going to a licensed breeder but even a licensed breeder can be a puppy mill which is actually not a crime. However, thanks to WTAE article we have more tools to find a legitimate breeder as you can use the American Kennel Club’s Breeder Referral Search to try to find a trusted breeder. Once again though, I strongly advise anyone looking to add a four-legged friend to their family to try to adopt a pet from their local shelter. Not only do shelters provide much-needed medical requirements for most pets looking for adoption but some even have services where you can be notified if they receive a certain breed of dog that you may be looking for.

Authorities in Prince William County, Virginia, have arrested three people on animal cruelty charges for allegedly selling very sick puppies on craigslist. Many of the puppies sold had parvovirus, or parvo as it’s more commonly known, and at least one had died after being sold. After receiving numerous complaints, animal control officers investigated the grounds where the puppies were being kept and calling it a puppy mill would be generous. According to reports, the living conditions for the puppies were deplorable, to say the least. Sadly, this is not an uncommon occurrence on craigslist.

If you’re familiar with Geebo, you know that we haven’t accepted ads for pets in quite some time in order to help prevent animal cruelty on a scale such as this. However, did you know that pet sales are listed as prohibited on craigslist? According to craigslist’s own terms of service, pet sales are prohibited but re-homing with a small adoption fee is ok. You couldn’t tell by going to craigslist and doing a search for puppies. Since craigslist rarely does any kind of moderation on their platform, these types of puppy sales continue, mostly unabated.

Buying a puppy should never be a heat of the moment decision and while buying a puppy off of craigslist may satisfy an urge of instant satisfaction, in the long run, it could also lead to heartbreak for you and your family. Don’t cheap out when it comes to adding a new member to your family. Always do your research first and only do business with legitimate and licensed breeders. Real breeders will never want to meet you in a parking lot or some other sketchy locale. Please also consider adopting from your local shelter. Too many shelters have to turn away animals because there’s not enough room in their kennels. Also, re-homing costs through shelters are usually very reasonable and in most cases, the animals have been well taken care of medically and emotionally by the shelter. Wouldn’t you rather be a hero in your dog’s eyes?

When someone is in the market for a new puppy, they often look for one with their heart and not necessarily their heads. Scammers of all shapes and sizes love to take advantage of the emotional response people tend to have after seeing a puppy for the first time. Not surprisingly, craigslist is often the venue scammers use to pass off as many puppies as they can.

A couple in Rancho San Diego, California, found this out recently when they adopted a miniature dachshund off of craigslist. The couple even admits they ignored some red flags once they saw the puppy. Those red flags were that the puppy was being sold at a too good to be true price and that the seller wanted to meet at a parking lot and not where the dogs were allegedly being bred. Days after adopting the puppy the dachshund became sick and a vet diagnosed the puppy with distemper. Sadly, this is an all too common occurrence on the unmoderated craigslist.

While purchasing a dog off of craigslist may give you that instant satisfaction of getting a puppy that day, in the long run, it’s worth taking your time to research the seller. You could be buying a dog from either a puppy mill or backyard breeder who is more intent on just making money than ethically breeding these dogs. Often these dogs have parvovirus which is contagious and can affect other pets in your household. For these reasons, Geebo does not accept ads for pets as we do not want to contribute to what is essentially animal cruelty. As always, we recommend only adopting pets from shelters or licensed breeders.

A somewhat disturbing story has come out of the Southeastern United States about a craigslist scam involving the supposed re-homing of horses. An actual third-year veterinary student is accused of taking horses from people on craigslist who are looking for a new home for their animals, and then for all intents and purposes, the student is making the horses disappear.

23-year-old Fallon Blackwood, of Boaz, Alabama, is accused of allegedly promising people all over the Southeast that she would re-home their horses with her own horse. At least in one incident when Fallon was pressed for information on how one horse was doing she reportedly told the horse’s former owner that both horses had been struck by lightning. Sadly, none of the horses were able to be found. A non-profit called NetPosse that tracks horse theft around the country is fearful that the horses have been sold for slaughter. As Geebo CEO Greg Collier pointed out in a 2014 blog post, it’s illegal to sell horses for slaughter in the United States, however, in neighboring Mexico the practice is still allowed. That’s only one of the many reasons why selling or giving away of animals is no longer permitted on Geebo.

Re-homing a pet is difficult enough as too many people want puppies or kittens and not full-grown animals. Horses are a whole other matter as they are expensive to house and maintain. If you’re looking for a new home for your horse don’t just offer it to just anyone online. First, try to see if someone in your local community can take your horse for you. Then, if you find someone who can, ask them for a reference from their veterinarian to make sure their capable of taking care of such animals.

Previously, we’ve discussed many times in the why Geebo does not accept listings for pet. Geebo CEO Greg Collier has gone on record to state that he didn’t want Geebo to be an avenue for puppy mills. The ASPCA defines a puppy mill as “a large-scale commercial dog breeding operation where profit is given priority over the well-being of the dogs.” Now, a county in Nevada is trying to put a stop to these cruel operations.

Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, is trying to introduce legislation designed to curtail illegal breeders and puppy mills within their county. You would think that this would be met with universal approval, but nothing is ever that simple. You’d be surprised how many people want a certain breed of no dog no matter how that dog was bred and pet stores claim that this will limit them on where they can purchase their animals from. Opponents to the legislation also derided shelters and rescue groups claiming those animals can’t be trusted.

Shelter and rescue pets get an unfair stigma because a number of people think that they all have behavior problems. In reality a puppy mill dog is more likely to have behavior problems as they’re often inbred to the point where it can cause mental and physical defects that often result in behavioral issues.

Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani also had a word of advice for people looking to buy a puppy online.

“There are some other things that we need to work on,” Giunchigliani said. “What we want is to educate people to never buy animals off of Craigslist. They are almost always coming from a puppy mill in another state.”

If you’re really looking to buy a purebred dog, always make sure that the breeder is licensed and check out the facilities to make sure they’re not abusing their animals. Also please consider adopting a dog from a rescue group or shelter and possibly even adopt an older dog as they often have a hard time finding new homes.

A woman from Fresno, California, posted an ad online for her Husky puppies. This brought a man to her home whom she said asked all the wrong questions and that he had brought a little boy with him. Later that night someone had hopped the fence and stolen the five puppies. Not only could these puppies be either flipped, abused, or sold for research but now this woman has had strangers at her house who could have cased it for possible additional robberies.

As Greg mentioned in his initial post on the subject, if you’re going to sell or offer pets for adoption your best bet is to reach out to your own personal network or a shelter that has a good record on re-homing animals. Posting pets for sale or adoption online just invites too many forms of trouble not only towards the animals but also into your home.

Any business owner needs to stay ahead of the trends, and unfortunately, that applies to trends in crime. I’ve said before in blog posts and TV interviews that we don’t carry personals because they can be used as a front for prostitution and human trafficking. We don’t carry pet sale ads, as they often trade in animals that have been bred through puppy mills—breeders who literally breed animals to death, leaving them undernourished and caged without proper exercise or loving contact. We simply won’t even take a chance at supporting criminal industries, so we don’t run the ads that market them.

Recent stories are showing that it’s not just online pet sales that can pose a threat to pets, but online pet adoptions, as well—often posted by well-meaning folks, under the heading, Free to a Good Home. Ads giving away dogs, cats, bunnies, and other animals to “good” homes may be posted by owners for a number of benign reasons, though they may lead to a life of pain and misery, and even death, for pets.

Remember the days of summers past when you’d ride down the street of your neighborhood in the back of your parent’s Pontiac or Buick, probably without a seat belt, and definitely without a car seat? You might pass a lemonade stand or a kid and his mom or dad on the corner with a cardboard box reading, “Kittens For Sale,” or, if you were really lucky, “Free Kittens.” No one thought anything of it. We survived, and for all we knew, so did our pets. But if not monitored, the reality of today’s digital marketplace can be a whole lot scarier for animals, just as it is for humans.

The SPCA reports that animal abusers troll online classified sites looking for free animals, and they know just what to say to put unsuspecting pet owners at ease. Some abusers have even brought unrelated children to meet pets and pet owners in an effort to appear nonthreatening. Small animals offered “free to a good home” or to be “rehomed,” such as rabbits and cats, have been used as live snake food. Dogs have been found used as bait to train other dogs for dogfights. And crooks or kill buyers sell these free animals to research facilities or for slaughter.

It’s not just household pets that face danger: While slaughtering horses for meat is illegal in the United States, it’s not in some other countries, such as neighboring Canada and Mexico. Kill buyers can often outbid adopters, and have taken advantage of the financial downturn to buy up horses on the cheap for transport and slaughter for meat. This poses a serious health risk to humans, as horses in the US are considered companion animals, and as such are often medically treated with drugs toxic to humans.

A pet is a member of the family. Be sure you’re financially and emotionally prepared to keep companion animals—healthily—for the duration of their lifetime. Though if you must rehome for an unavoidable reason, it’s simply not safe to give away or sell animals to strangers via online ads without conducting strict home assessments and background checks. Most folks aren’t equipped for that, so volunteers at the SPCA suggest that anyone looking to rehome a pet work through their personal networks first—friends, neighbors, coworkers, church groups, their vet’s office etc.—maybe that’s why the neighborhood “Kittens For Sale” seemed to work fine back in the day? We all knew each other!

If your personal network doesn’t yield a reliable home, a reputable rescue group or shelter with good statistics in rehoming animals can help. Doing the right thing by your pet may take a little longer, may require just a bit more time and attention, but their health and safety is in your hands, and it’s worth it. We care about your family as we do our own, and that includes your pets. That’s why we don’t run Free to a Good Home ads at Geebo, and we hope you won’t anywhere else.